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Comment by sct202 | Hacker News Reader

I don't know why Google thinks it's okay to have volunteers with official looking titles (like Diamond Product Expert) giving support when there's no validation that what they're saying is correct. There are thousands of votes on this question; it should merit an actual response at some point.

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Agree. To go further, I find these "community-powered" support forums infuriating to read, when they are run by a huge company that should be remunerating support staff.

Why anyone would volunteer to answer queries for free in this context is beyond me. What do they get out of it? A flashy hat to wear and a few trivial perks?

Respect to those trying to help out, but when a question like this is posed in the forum, I would only be interested in hearing the response of a salaried Google employee, not a volunteer.

It's even worse when the response offers trite, generic information that doesn't relate to the problem, regrettably a common occurrence on this type of forum.

Edit: Note, these remarks are not applicable to the commendable people providing support in FOSS projects, and in other non-commercial contexts.

You mean like Stackoverflow?

I mean in the context of users providing support for commercial products without being paid for it.

Stack Overflow is a general Q&A site, not a support forum for a commercial product. The context is very different. Also, while I'm at it, it has its own flaws, but people providing trite and useless answers isn't one, they get downvoted to oblivion.

Which companies use stack overflow as their one and only customer support channel?

Presumably the company would rather have something like Stack Overflow, but with total control over the moderation.

I think Stack Overflow used to sell this as a service. Don't know if anyone used it.

Stackoverflow isn't company support, it's programmers supporting other programmers.

>It's even worse when the response offers trite, generic information that doesn't relate to the problem, regrettably a common occurrence on this type of forum.

Even worse worse when the response is actively hostile. Previously discussed: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28216896>

By the same token I don't know why jp88 thinks it's okay to spend their time volunteering on behalf of Google. Is there some angle that I don't see or is there a subculture of people who enjoy providing free services to huge highly-profitable companies?

That would cost money!!!

Google, as a company, has still not figured out customer support. It is evident in their Google Suite products, GCP and Pixel phones.

Actually support for Pixel phones is good. Not for Gsuite/GCP though.

Dropping updates for 3 year old phones isn’t something I would call “good”

I agree here, but really only Apple is doing okay on this front, with Samsung very slightly better than Google.

Anecdotal, but I've seen figures like "number 263 in line for representative, estimated wait time 8 hours" in the weeks after I got my lemon Pixel 6 and had to get it RMA'd. Even after I got through to a human, it took tons of effort to escalate away from the song-and-dance "troubleshooting support" to a person who actually had the ability to get a replacement mailed out.

Contrast with Apple, where I've gotten knowledgeable humans on the line within a minute or two, and scheduled a service appointment at a nearby store.

If Google wants its Pixels to be the iPhone of the Android world, then they should provide more than the bottom-of-the-barrel outsourced support they currently offer.

I literally smashed my Pixel XL with a beer bottle (it tipped into the phone, there's no way a phone can survive that), swapped my sim to my old phone and called their 1-800. Was on the phone with support within 15m, they overnighted me a new one (under the protection plan) without me having to send in the old one, and then the new one had an issue with the proximity sensor, so I used the on-phone support to have them call me instead of waiting on hold. Explained the situation and they overnighted a third one which worked great without needing to return anything. I then sent the other two back. It was very good support actually given the circumstances, and I used that phone for two or three years before getting the Pixel 3XL. After having the 3XL for a little less than two years, I randomly took off the case to show off how nice the phone was without one (it was the white model), and realized the battery was swelling a slight but noticeable amount. It was a day or two before the protection plan expired, I called them via the builtin support functionality, again in a few minutes to check if the claim would be honored, hopped off that call after investing about 15-30m of my time, did a pretty easy claim process (another 5-10m) and had a new phone delivered in about 3 days. Swapped my SIM in, transferred all of my stuff, and shipped the old one. It was seamless and easy.

In general, Google's support is mostly nonexistent. There are harrowing stories of Pixel support, but I have not had them, so ehh.

On the other hand, I have had humorous kerfuffles with Dell in trying to stop them from sending me a replacement unit that turned out to be unnecessary (even though the support rep had issued a replacement ahead of arrival due to a report of damage by UPS). They said we'll ship you one, just let us know if the one that arrives is not damaged and we'll cancel it. Despite me doing that in triplicate they still sent it to me. And then after I spent a bunch more time getting support to understand this, I was able to ship it back via FedEx, and about a month later I got a notice that I never did... Again, was able to remedy this with a chat with support and sending over some proof, but it left much to be desired.

I also have the Pixel 6 Pro from launch day, and though the software issues have been frustrating, the phone itself has been great.

Yes they have, they open sourced their support.

I should have said “successfully” figured out customer support…

>"We've open sourced our documentation on GitHub" is an invitation for folks who can't code to do volunteer work for a trillion dollar company.

https://twitter.com/QuinnyPig/status/1173368432609226752

Just like Uber is using meat drivers as a temp solution until AI gets solved, Google must've had the same attitude towards support.

Why pay for customer support when your userbase is so captive that you'll see your profits regardless?

They learned from the best: the Microsoft community forums.

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